The Impossible Dream
by SunInside
Summary: SPOLIERS! In episode 25 of Death Note, Light Yagami witnesses the death of his most difficult rival yet- L. But what would have happened if Light was never able to kill Ryuzaki, due to developed feelings for him? *I DO NOT OWN DEATH NOTE*
1. Chapter 1

Soft rain dripped down the tall windows. The grey sky cast a dismal, vague glow over the city, omitting in its subtle highlights and yawning shadows off of the sharp angles of buildings. The people were slow. The air around seemed to weigh them down, as if they were trying to push their way through deep water.

All things somber and dull laced into that day seemed to capture themselves in him, startling any victim who may look on him.

Light wondered what cause Ryuzaki would have to appear so humbly melancholy.

A cause that L would be aware of, anyway.

L couldn't possibly be conscious to the fact that Light planned to bring him to his death.

But as he stared out of a window into the fogged, dreary city, Kira's conscience told him of an impossible possibility.

One in which L had somehow discovered the inevitability of his oncoming death.

The words Ryuzaki had spoken to him still resonated in Light's mind.

"It'll be lonely, won't it? You and I will be parting ways soon."

This statement clearly implied that Ryuzaki could possibly know.

But the detective's strange behavior contradicted this assumption.

Why would Ryuzaki merely appear sad if he truly knew about Light's plan? Wouldn't he try to stop Light before it was too late?

But Ryuzaki showed no signs of wanting to expose Light as Kira; if he even knew that Light was in fact Kira.

Yagami decided that there was little chance that L knew about his plan. He didn't want to believe that L knew. But this estimation still could not answer the question as to why Ryuzaki was so sad…

Against the better judgment as the god of the new world, Light took a few steps towards Ryuzaki, who was also fixing his eyes on the rain outside the window.

His reflection in the window mimicked his despondent expression. His black eyes were vacant, hiding carefully the mystery of the emotion which was undulating deeper inside, somewhere in which Light could not reach. His ebony hair hung long in his face, clashing gently with his porcelain skin. Light wondered what it would be like to get a closer look at those shadowy eyes, to carefully peel away the layers of Ryuzaki's walls like petals from a rose. To sweep away the grey veil dividing Light from the truth behind his eyes, and to see what kinds of things grow there.

Light had a natural instinct to reach out to those in pain in this way. To shroud them in feigned comfort and empty words because he could manage no more than that. But now, looking at Ryuzaki, the silent wistful L whom was standing in his grave, Light hadn't the heart to pretend.

He put a cautious hand on L's shoulder, pushing his fingers gently into the soft texture of his shirt.

"Tell me what you're thinking," Light asked Ryuzaki. And to his own surprise, he really wanted to know.

A look in Ryuzaki's eyes caught the light of the sky as they turned to look at the other man. But Light could not figure out what that look was.

Yagami saw himself reflected in L's gaze. Normally, when Light saw himself, he saw a strong, intelligent god, on his way to ruling the world. But when he saw himself while looking at Ryuzaki, all of the good and righteousness about Kira was gone. And in Light's reflection, there was only darkness.

"The bells," Ryuzaki murmured in his quiet, low voice. "They're quieter when you're here."

L glanced back at the rain.

"That can only mean one thing."

Light felt his heart rate increase.

_Does this mean that he knows what I'm going to do after all?_

"What does that mean, Ryuzaki?"

When they stood together in the rain not two days ago, Light remembered Ryuzaki speaking of bells that he hears in his head that distract him, bells that grew louder and louder with very day.

The detective's eyes closed slowly. He looked so tired.

"Nothing that matters anymore."

Ryuzaki placed his hand on the cold window, causing the glass to fog around the perimeter of his fingers.

"It won't be long now until their song is done," L whispered.

Light wondered if that could be a good thing for Ryuzaki. But something in his heart told him the opposite.

The strange man blinked slowly. His desolate face was cast towards the ground.

Light felt nothing for L. For the figure of threat and challenge that the name posed as against Kira and everything he'd worked for. But for Ryuzaki, the person, the queer and silly genius with a sweet tooth and mysterious disposition…

This was the person Light lamented for.

"Let me share in your suffering," Light offered to Ryuzaki.

Yagami realized how upset he really was due to this man's sadness.

Ryuzaki's eyes turned to Light again.

"That's sounds quite alien coming from you, Light."

There was no hint of malice in Ryuzaki's voice, but he meant what he said. Light was taken aback by this.

Ryuzaki let his hand slide from the window. He turned away from Light, and approached the exit door of the large, spacious room. His bare feet echoed quietly against the long walls, whispering secrets that Light couldn't make out.

"Don't start worrying about me now, Light," Ryuzaki said calmly. The door clicked shut behind him, and Light was alone.

The outline of Ryuzaki's hand remained on the window. As it began to fade, Light placed his own hand inside of it, and the fog began to grow on the window again, stretching outward with every moment that Light held his hand there.

Light finally understood the magnitude of what he was going to do. He was beginning to understand that the weight of Ryuzaki's life was far more than worthless.

But how? What was it about Ryuzaki that made a small place in Light want to keep him alive?

Light watched his hand as it reluctantly dropped from the window. He couldn't keep the remnant of Ryuzaki there on the window forever.

No matter how persistently Light hung on, he would have to let go eventually. And when he let go, the mark faded into nothing. Light knew that it would.

And he felt the sorrow like a knife in his chest.

The rain fell persistently in violent sheets of water as night descended. Light lie in bed with Misa, accepting his misery without a fight.

"Rem is ready," Misa said, snuggling into Light's chest. For the first time, he had a strong urge to push her away.

"Get whatever information you can out of Ryuzaki. And when your good and finished, I'll tell Rem to kill him. Kay?"

Light saw Ryuzaki everywhere.

He wasn't surprised. The black hair and eyes so wonderfully resembled the thick, warm darkness of the night. The moonlight skin poured through Light's window in graceful rays of a bright glow. He heard Ryuzaki's deafening silence, which so easily wrapped itself around Light's cold heart, threatening to break it.

Light wondered what Ryuzaki was thinking. Did the man think about him in this way?

Although the idea was absurd, Light made a silent prayer that Ryuzaki did not nevertheless. The thought of killing the detective in general was already starting to gravely disturb Light. But killing someone who thought about him… like this…

Light wondered with terror if he could ever bring himself to kill Ryuzaki, no matter the circumstances. He wracked his brain determinedly to find a different way, but there wasn't one. Ryuzaki had to die.

Light knew that this would be the first and last tear he'd ever shed for Ryuzaki.


	2. Chapter 2

Light awoke shortly after dawn. He dressed into his suit and tied his shiny shoes with utter repetition. He left his inviting, secluding bedroom behind him reluctantly and made his way towards the main control room of the Kira Task Force Headquarters where he'd start yet another day tricking and conniving his co-workers out of suspecting him.

_As long as Misa has not failed to continue writing names in her death note, therefore keeping the rate of criminal deaths the same while my notebook is in the hands of the Task Force,_ Light thought_, I shouldn't have to worry about them starting to suspect me. Even if they do begin to question Misa, I can have her give up ownership of the notebook like last time, therefore hiding any evidence. I'm completely safe from everyone… except Ryuzaki, who may or may not suspect me. Damn, if I could only figure out what he's thinking… But nothing he says ever makes any sense! If I could somehow figure out what Ryuzaki may know about me, maybe then I could find a way to counter his assumptions, without having to kill him…_

A pang of panic shot through Light's chest as the thought of seeing Ryuzaki killed flashed into his mind in it's familiar explosive force, coursing a kind of guilt through his veins in which he was unfamiliar to.

_What am I thinking?_ Light chided himself. _Where is all of this coming from? Why do I feel so reluctant to just kill him already?_

Another image of Ryuzaki entered Light's brain. His shaded eyes, his pale face filled with vacancy of the detective's presence that wandered upon Light's mind ceaselessly. The absence of motivation.

That was it; Light knew it to be true at this point. Ryuzaki had taken Kira's nerve with his utter dejection and emptiness, and there was no way of knocking on his door and asking for it back.

Light wondered irritably when Kira, the god of the new world, had become so susceptible to the contagious misery of others, especially that of people in which he needed to eliminate. You'd think he'd be stronger than that.

At this time, Light decided to accept the fact that Ryuzaki was too intelligent to be completely clueless to not only his oncoming death, but Light's secret identity as the murderer who will inflict the death.

He remembered awfully how Ryuzaki considered Light his one and only friend. He tasted the delicious cake on his tongue, the cake that they had shared in a college cafeteria what seemed like eons ago. He heard the clash of a tennis ball on a racket, bringing him back kicking and screaming to the tennis court in which they had shared a game. The interesting conversations they shared and the days they spent together on the Task Force crashed around on the walls of Light's sanity and sheared away at them in their sharp edges and unforgiving planes.

Did all of that really mean nothing to Light?

He pushed the thought away angrily.

_I can't suddenly decide that Ryuzaki matters. He's L. He's against me. He is Kira's enemy. He must die. And I must become god._

Light entered the control room and found Matsuda, Aizowa, Mogi, and his own father sifting through a clutter of papers covering a small coffee table. Light's red eyes then picked out Ryuzaki, who sat with his knees up in a chair watching the surveillance camera monitors. His thumb pressed onto his lower lip, he moved the mouse around slowly. The same sadness as before was there, enlaced in his slumped posture, his burdened, lanky hands. It made Light want to scream and cry at the same time.

"Hey, Light, Come here!" Matsuda cried with a Cheshire-cat grin, holding the death note in his hands. "You're gonna be really happy about this!"

Ryuzaki side-glanced Light, and appeared as if there was something he wanted to say. Light awaited his words with enthusiasm, but L apparently changed his mind and returned to the computer monitors.

Light tore his eyes from Ryuzaki and focused on Matsuda.

"What is it?"

"We've been studying the rules written in the death notebook," Mogi said, looking over Matsuda's shoulder at the note.

Light joined the men, sitting down slowly on one of the couches. Matusda continued.

"We found a rule saying that if you don't continuously write names in the notebook after using it once, you'll die within 13 days!"

Yagami grinned to himself. _Yes. They've found the fake rule._

"This rule clear's your name, as well as Misa's," Mogi said, smiling. "You were held in confinement for well over 13 days with no access to the death notebook. There's no way that you could be Kira."

"Although he has no reason to suspect you of being Kira anymore," Aizowa said, "Ryuzaki claims that the chance of you being Kira is now 3%. Lower, but existent."

Light expected this. He looked at Ryuzaki again, who swiveled around in his chair.

"I'm sorry Light," L said in his soft, quiet voice. "But my deduction skills restrict me from lowering the chance of you to being Kira to 0%. There is still a possibility."

Ryuzaki shrugged bashfully. "Perhaps I am merely unable to admit that I was wrong in my hypothesis about you."

Light knew that this wasn't how Ryuzaki really felt.

He then realized that Ryuzaki really wasn't up to something. He wasn't trying to rile Light up, therefore possibly exposing him as Kira. He just didn't want to lie about his suspicions.

Light appreciated this, a little more than he would have liked.

"Don't worry, Ryuzaki."

L looked at Light again quizzically. Light smiled.

"I'll convince you. I'll prove that I'm not Kira."

_It's my only way to clear my name while keeping him alive. But how? If I don't find a way to find fake evidence stating that I'm not Kira soon, I'll have to kill him, and that's all there is too it._

Ryuzaki returned Light's smile with a small, awkward grin. Created with struggle, but genuine. And it vaguely suppressed the cloud of sadness around him for a split second.

"I'd like that, Light-kun."

Light turned to address the rest of the Task Force.

"I've been studying many of the criminal victims for days now," Light announced. "I have been searching for patterns, correlations that could lead us to Kira's location. Although this theory doesn't have much to go on, I believe that we can find Kira with a careful execution of traps, breadcrumbs for him to follow. Obviously, Kira will be looking for us by now. He knows who we are, the fact that we're looking for him. But he doesn't know where we are or what are names are, or our faces. We need to lure him in, drop carefully released hints and clues for him leading him straight to us. And when that happens, we capture him before he can kill us."

"Good plan, Light!" Matsuda said, smiling.

"It seems dangerous to me," Mogi warned. "Won't Kira suspect a trap?"

"Not if we're careful," Aizowa assured him. "As long as the clues we give him are small enough to look like accidents, Kira will presume that we have simply lost our ability to keep ourselves a secret. He'll find us. But Light, how can we capture him?"

"Well we could always just tackle him to the ground and punch him in the face!"

"Matsuda, you're not helping."

As the Task Force members continued to bicker, Light watched miserably as Ryuzaki rose from his chair, and exited the Control room, not leaving a single word for Light to cling on to when he was gone.

Light remembered that he had told Misa that he wasn't killing Ryuzaki because he was trying to get information out of him concerning the case.

_She'll fall for just about anything_, Light thought.

He knew very well that Ryuzaki held high walls up against him, ever since the suspicion of him being Kira started. Only recently did Light start banging on the hard, cold stone of the walls, longing to be let in, for reasons that he hadn't had before.

Why did Light want to be let inside?

He had been uncertain about far too much recently.

Light looked up from his list of criminals after a while, scanning the control room for Ryuzaki.

He had still not returned. This worried Light.

"Hey Matsuda," Light asked, "Where's Ryuzaki?"

The young man averted his eyes over to the computer monitors.

"He's up on the roof for some reason. He's been up there just standing by himself for like an hour now. He's really weird."

Light sighed, and stood up.

"I'll see if I can get him to come back down."

He didn't know what he wanted from this trip to the roof. He didn't know what he'd find there. Would he face the emptiness of Ryuzaki's eyes, darker and more dismal then ever?

His quick steps echoed around the stairwell that led all the way to the roof.

Ryuzaki was so brutally and achingly unreadable. Yet at the same time, Light knew exactly what he was thinking. He walked in the shadows, afraid to show what he really felt, yet it was so incredibly obvious to Light how much he was suffering. But no one else seemed to notice.

Maybe it was simply Light's guilty conscience.

Perhaps Ryuzaki's sadness was all in Light's mind.

No, it was too strong not to be real.

Light's steps increased in speed as his legs coaxed him on.

Why could only Light see L's pain, his sworn enemy's pain? How was Ryuzaki so capable of corrupting Kira's plan for victory not in any form of scheming or outwitting him, but simply conveying to him his shroud of misery? He felt Ryuzaki's aura of grayness in its tremors, in it's every movement. It reverberated in Ryuzaki's words which seemed to flow into Light's ears much more easily than those of the others. It was everywhere now. It spun around Light's head like a top, it invaded his every waking thought and inserted itself even into the better moments and greater of times. He had to know. Light had to know _why_.

He burst out of the roof door and was greeted by a wave of cool, fresh wind. Light spotted Ryuzaki sitting alone on one of the ledges of the roof, looking up towards the clouds.

"Come, sit, Light," Ryuzaki said, not turning around. "If you're brave."

Light cautiously approached Ryuzaki and sat by him, right in front of a 60-story drop to the bustling traffic below.

"Well this is dangerous," Light commented, looking out at the far-stretching city.

"I find it quite invigorating, yes," Ryuzaki agreed. "It puts a barrier between myself and my thoughts."

After a long pause, Light sighed.

"I don't know why you've been acting so dejected recently," Light said gently to Ryuzaki. "But it's better to get it out than to keep it all bottled up inside."

L cast his eyes down.

"Will you hold my hand, Light?"

Yagami felt the adrenaline of his body increase by over 1000%. His eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

"Human interaction decreases rate of distraction by over 30%," Ryuzaki explained. "I can't think straight right now. The bells are unusually loud today."

Light was flustered, to say the least.

"Well, uhm, A-alright Ryuzaki, if that's what you want."

Light carefully laced his fingers through Ryuzaki's.

Part of Light's mind protested, the Kira part. It lectured him; telling him not to offer a speck of consolation to his enemy. But another part of his mind, however small that part was, encouraged him. It told him to embrace Ryuzaki, to offer the comfort that L could use to let the pain flow out of his body, to make it gone, to destroy it.

But what was giving Light those insane thoughts? He wanted to carry out Ryuzaki's death as planned. He wanted to want to kill him. But sitting there on the edge of oblivion, feeling Ryuzaki's elegant, soft fingers clasped in his own, something drove Light far away from his bloodlust. And Light wondered if he'd ever find his way back to it.

Suddenly, Light felt tight hands gripping his arm.

"Ryuzaki?" Light asked.

Ryuzaki buried his head into Light's shoulder.

"Nothing makes sense," L mumbled, his voice rich with sorrow. "I can't think anymore. I could never say it, Light. I could never say why. But I…I…"

Ryuzaki's struggling voice stopped when Light's mind, which was so often plagued by raging thoughts and confused assumptions, went completely blank for the first time. He pulled Ryuzaki into his arms.

"I don't need to know what it is, Ryuzaki. I'm sorry for asking. What matters is that it's affected you so much. And Ryuzaki, it's affecting me too. You're not alone in this.

For a moment, Light thought he could hear the bells, in their boisterous chiming, banging in their minor tunes. But silence resonated as L clung to Light, drinking in his words. But then, Ryuzaki slid out of his arms, letting go.

"Thank you for your kindness, Light," Ryuzaki said, a shadow cast into his eyes. "But I can gain no comfort from you regarding this. I'm not certain what I was thinking. I apologize."

Light had never felt more sorrow. As he watched with a speechless voice as Ryuzaki stood and exited the rooftop without another glance, he felt more empty than he ever had. He'd never felt so useless, so crestfallen.

The ghost of Ryuzaki's touch remained in his hand, in his arms. His soft, black hair still brushed against Light's cheek, regardless of his absence. The scent of strawberries, permeating from his clothes.

_Ryuzaki_. The name sounded in Light's mind, it pulsed through his veins. The name was written in permanent ink across Light's sanity. What it meant. What the name felt.

And Light could hear the sound. The sound of everything falling apart.

The clashing noise of everything he had worked for shattering because of one man.

The way in which this man made him feel.

But what _was _it?

And the second tear that Light shed for Ryuzaki rolled down his cheek, and it was carried by the wind over the ledge of the building.

And by the time Light's tear hit the ground an eternity below, Light knew what it was.

It was love.


	3. AUTHORS NOTE

Hey everybody!

Sorry I haven't updated in like FOREVER!

I've been working on this other story recently…

But as of a date very soon in the future…

I WILL be continuing this story!

Many chapters are yet to come, so don't you guys worry!

Love always,

SunInside :D


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